The present invention relates generally to a method and system for recording and reproducing the activities performed by an individual web browser.
Web browsers, such as Microsoft Corporation""s Internet Explorer internet browser and Netscape Communications Corporation""s Navigator(trademark) internet browser, provide a graphical, easy-to-navigate interface for retrieving and viewing information available from the Web. The World Wide Web utilizes a system known as a hypertext system to facilitate navigation through the World Wide Web environment. The hypertext system employs special connections, or links, which are embedded into documents displayed through use of internet browser software. Clicking on a word, phrase, image or thumbnail graphic including one of these links instructs the browser to retrieve a document, graphic, sound, or other information associated with the embedded link.
Documents published electronically in hypertext form, i.e., documents constructed utilizing Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), are becoming a defacto standard for sharing information online. HTML is a language for describing structured documents. Documents written in HTML are ASCII text documents including: (1) the text of the document, and (2) HTML tags that identify document elements, formatting and structure, as well as links to graphic files, other documents, or other information. Browser software interprets the HTML tags included in downloaded documents to properly display the text and referenced elements. Images and other referenced elements are not normally contained in the downloaded document, however, and must be separately downloaded in order to completely display the HTML document and referenced elements.
Documents, also referred to as web pages, as well as the image files, additional document files and other elements referenced in the web pages may be maintained on one or multiple web servers remote from the user retrieving and viewing the web pages. With the development of information technology and networking infrastructure, more and more businesses, government agencies, universities and individuals maintain web sites and conduct business over the Internet. For example, a service provider can display its service in a set of web pages maintained on a web server owned by the provider.
To improve the service and assistance provided to consumers using the Internet, it is desirable to provide a mechanism to record the detailed browsing activities of an individual browser, or to force a browser to reproduce the browser activities recorded at one or more browsers. The ability to record and reproduce browser activities is useful in a variety of applications such as consumer behavior analysis, quality assurance, and training applications.
One difficulty in achieving the above objectives is that web servers are designed to serve each individual web browsers in a stateless manner where one browser request has no relationship to previous or subsequent requests. In processing of requests, a web site has no control over the sequences of the requests.
Currently it is very difficult to accurately capture the browsing activities of a person visiting a web site. Analyzing page requests received by a web server does not accurately reflect the actual sequence of pages visited by an individual browser. This is because:
Web pages retrieved by a browser from browser cache or a proxy server will not be recorded as a page request on the web server.
A web server does not record the timing characteristics of a user""s interaction with a form because this interaction is handled directly by the web browser. The final state of the data entered into a form is sent by the browser to the web server when the form is submitted.
Because of the limited quality (granularity) of data maintained by the server, it is currently not possible for a server-based application to reproduce the sequence of activities performed by a specific browser. Web servers currently record statistics on each page requested, but do not reliably keep track of each page that is displayed at a user""s browser, or record page requests retrieved from the browser""s cache or a proxy server. Nor does the web server currently record browser activities including the timing of each data entry into an HTML form. There are no known tools that are capable of recording detailed browser activities and then later providing a mechanism to replay the same sequence of browser activities through one or more browsers.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a new and useful mechanism to record the detailed browsing activities of an individual browserxe2x80x94regardless of whether the information displayed by the browser was obtained from browser cache, proxy server cache or a web server.
It is another object of the present invention to provide such a mechanism which includes the ability to store each URL request and each piece of data entered into an HTML form along with a time stamp to keep track of when each of the browser activities took place.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a new and useful mechanism to force a browser to reproduce a recorded set of browser activities at one or more browsers.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide such a mechanism wherein the set of recorded browser activities can be reproduced at the same rate as the original browser activities, or can be reproduced at proportionately slower or faster rates.
It is an additional object of the present invention to provide such a mechanism wherein the playing of a sequence of web pages may be started, stopped or paused at any URL in the sequence of pages recorded.
In one aspect, the present invention provides a method for repeating browsing activities performed by a customer or user. The method comprises the steps of: (a) recording browsing activities as they are performed at a first terminal; (b) retrieving to a second terminal the browsing activities recorded at the first terminal; and (c) repeating at the second terminal the browsing activities recorded at the first terminal.
The present invention further provides a method for recording the activities of a number of customers using a browser and then selecting one browser session for replay at another browser. The method comprises the steps of: (a) browsing web pages at a plurality of user browsers; (b) creating a plurality of sessions at a network server, each of said sessions being associated with a respective one of said plurality of user browsers; (c) recording the browsing activities for each of the user browsers into an associated session at said network server; (d) selecting one of the sessions; and (e) repeating activities recorded for the selected session at an administrative browser. We could also replay to more than one browser at the same time.